1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a facility-guidance process, a facility-guidance apparatus, and a computer-readable medium storing a facility-guidance program, and particularly to a facility-guidance process, a facility-guidance apparatus, and a computer-readable medium storing a facility-guidance program for guiding a user (visitor) to an exhibition place in a facility.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, large-scale facilities handling a variety of articles are increasing with the diversification of the consumers' needs. For example, large-scale shopping centers constituted by specialty stores in various fields, large bookstores and libraries handling a wide selection of specialty books, and other facilities are currently under construction. Further, in the large exhibition and convention halls, events in which many exhibitors participate are held every day. However, as the size of the facilities and the number of articles handled in each facility increase, visitors' efforts needed to search for desired articles also increase. In particular, the visitors' efforts needed to search for desired articles become great in facilities with which the visitors are unfamiliar or facilities in which exhibited articles are rearranged for refurbishment.
In order to overcome the above problem, systems which enable searching for an exhibition place of a desired article (of commerce) by using a portable terminal or a terminal placed within a facility have been proposed. For example, a system which displays on a terminal an exhibition place of an article satisfying an inputted condition when a visitor inputs through the terminal the name or article category of an article which the visitor wishes to buy has been proposed (for example, by Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-307731). In addition, a system which presents an article menu (indicating a plurality of related articles) to a visitor, prompts the visitor to select a desired article from the article menu, and displays on a terminal an exhibition place of the selected article has also been proposed (for example, by Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-178165). When the above systems are used, each visitor can immediately go toward the place displayed on the terminal and search for the desired article, so that the visitor can greatly save the effort at searching for desired article.
Nevertheless, according to the techniques disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publications Nos. 2000-307731 and 2003-178165, the visitors are required to definitely designate the names or article categories of the articles which the visitors search for. Therefore, the visitors cannot search for the articles when the visitors do not have so concrete conceptions of the articles that the visitors can designate the names or article categories of the articles. On the other hand, in facilities with which the visitors are familiar, in many cases, the visitors can determine places at which the desired articles are probably exhibited. In those cases, the visitors can view articles exhibited at places by which the visitors go, concretize the conceptions of the desired articles which the visitors have, and find the articles which matches the concretized conceptions. In the above circumstances, there are demands for a technique enabling searching for an article based on only a vague conception of the article even in a facility with which a visitor is unfamiliar or in which articles are rearranged for refurbishment.